The most recommended Lovecraftian horror books

Possibly the most famous book on this list, this book was included not for its fame, but for the author’s ability to handle the Eldritch/Cosmic horror trope and make it hilarious. A wonderful mix of horror and comedy, the pseudonymous Wong is also the main character in the book. His first-person narration paired with other details paints this book as an actual series of events that he is risking his life and all of reality by telling you these bizarre events. An homage to the Lovecraftian style and several real-world paranormal mysteries will surely entertain readers, however for writers, it shows you how to blend the real-world, inspiration from other literary worlds, and your own creative content to make a fantastic story. 

Can we even talk about tentacle horror without a mention of the master, Lovecraft? Some of his best work is included in this collection, and it is the base that all other tentacle horror is founded form. Heck, all horror for that matter. You have to start at the beginning in order to move forward. Right?

Sometimes I want a dense, fascinating world to unpack, and sometimes I want to open a book and have it punch me in the face with no-holds-barred action and adventure.

The main character of Let Sleeping Gods Lie is Porter Rockwell – a real person from the history of Utah Territory and the Old West. But this story takes place where, once again, legends of the area have come to life and evil has real, lethal fangs. It’s like a spaghetti western meets Die Hard meets a D&D campaign – which pushes every single one of my buttons.

This one has a hero that refuses to be stopped, action that isn’t afraid of pushing expectations, and an unabashed love of over-the-top set pieces that made me giggle in delight.

This is such a wonderful mash-up of different elements all brought together.

Frankenstein, the werewolf, Dracula, Jack the Ripper, elder gods, and so much more. This book showed me that a writer can take a traditionally bleak subject and turn it around into something fun. One of the most interesting parts of this book comes from the readers rather than the author.

The book is split into thirty-one chapters, one for each day in October. Fans of this novel will read it one chapter per night throughout that month, experiencing each occurrence at the same time as the characters.

Noir can sometimes be hard to identify, but most readers are familiar with the tropes: the put-upon private investigator, the case that he can’t walk away from, the hunt for leads, the twists and double-crosses. With Hammers on Bone, we get all the aesthetics of a hardboiled detective story but also: Lovecraftian monsters. Noir stories lay bare individual and collective moral failings, and in adding eldritch horrors, the book further externalizes those ills, showing how monstrous humans can be.

Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw is a novella that melds the hardboiled detective novel with Lovecraftian monsters. Our private dick, John Persons, is hired by a ten-year-old kid to off his abusive stepfather. From this classic noir setup, to the character voice and dialect, to the shady characters, to the twists and reversals, this book really keys into the strengths of the genre, and amplifies them even further with… show more.

Cool cover, right? What’s the book about? When it comes to this great author, it could be anything in the scary realm of horror. This book is amazing, with perfect doses of Lovecraftian horror, pulp fiction, and riveting characters. Still a favorite. Well-written and turns up not only the horror but well-defined characters, this author never misses the mark. A great book to introduce yourself to his work, too.

This was the first book I ever read by HP Lovecraft and after reading it, I read everything else that I could find by such a talented writer. Lovecraft’s stories are dark, doom-ridden tales that are filled with cosmic horror, nightmarish landscapes, and indescribable monsters. But it’s not only the tales themselves that captivated me, it’s the style in which they were written. Lovecraft has such a beautiful literary style of writing that really made me feel what the characters felt and see what horrors they witnessed. His work definitely inspired me to pick up pen and paper and write stories of my own.

This debut novel is a delight to read for it not only blends detective fiction with Lovecraftian horror, it also weaves a spell filled with the Blues scene and the Southern gothic genre. An intriguing tale from start to finish, it features a war veteran turned detective hired to find missing a blues man. It takes place in the Jim Crow south of 1951, these times being a horror unto themselves. Rich with atmosphere and mystery, the scenes the author depicts are something else entirely.

Dread Island was an enjoyable read for me due to its mix of Lovecraftian horror intertwined with the old tales of Huckleberry Fin. The way Joe R. Lansdale depicted his version of the story was incredible and gave me the insight that anything can be made into a horror story. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys horror, especially Lovecraftian-style horror.

I took a deep dive into Lovecraft’s oeuvre this year in an effort to make my way through Alan Moore’s fantastic “Providence” (which constantly references HPL).

At the Mountains of Madness clearly stands out as his magnum opus. After a long, suspenseful trip to Antarctic wastelands, we discover an origin story for much of Lovecraft’s entire mythos, in the form of the “Elder Gods”, who despite their utter otherness still invoke our sympathies.

The love and detail which Lovecraft puts into describing these creatures and what they were attempting to do is mesmerizing, and I’m surprised how often I’ve returned to this singular piece. If you only read one HPL story, this vision of alien gods and lost civilizations will stay with you long after you've turned the last page.